Season of part-time jobs kicks off with holidays

— -- Lloyd Slocum was unemployed for 18 months, but like hundreds of thousands of Americans, he's working part time this holiday shopping season, unloading trucks and stocking shelves for a Bealls store in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

"It gives you something to look forward to," says Slocum, 29.

He plans to use the cash to buy his father a Christmas present and hopes to parlay the gig into a full-time position with Bealls/Burke's stores, a Sunbelt chain.

Black Friday, the official start of the holiday shopping frenzy, also kicks off the less-celebrated season of the part-time worker. Retailers alone are hiring about 500,000 seasonal employees this year, most of whom are part time, according to the National Retail Federation. Retailers' recent shift to opening on Thanksgiving or midnight on Black Friday has intensified the need for part-time workers.

Holiday jobs offer financial and emotional lifelines for many of the nation's jobless. They also point up a troubling reality: A near-record number of Americans are working part time throughout the year, even though they would prefer full-time jobs. It's not just because of the sluggish economy. Economists cite a broader, longer-term shift toward part-time work as employers cut expenses and more precisely match staffing with the ebbs and flows of customer demand.

The number of part-timers who really want full-time positions — so-called involuntary part-time employees — has risen from 8.4 million in January to 8.9 million last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total has hovered at 8.5 million to 9 million since early 2009 — double the pre-recession level.

By contrast, the tally of unemployed Americans has stayed flat at about 13.9 million this year and is down from about 15 million in late 2009 as employers have added a modest 2 million or so jobs. The disparity underscores how the nation's official 9% jobless rate doesn't fully reflect the toll inflicted by a half-speed economic recovery.

"The unemployment rate significantly misses the stress that the job market is under," says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics.

To be sure, part-time work — defined by the Labor Department as fewer than 35 hours a week — provides sorely needed income and experience that often can be leveraged into full-time jobs. And it's far preferable to unemployment. But it also creates financial uncertainty and instability for workers, economists say, and can keep employees in a cycle that prevents them from advancing to more lucrative positions. Most part-time workers don't get benefits, such as health insurance, sick days or paid vacation.

The number of part-time workers shot up three years ago when businesses cut employees' hours as a precursor to massive layoffs in the recession. Many firms are still trimming their employees' workweeks amid tepid customer demand. Typically, those hours are restored when sales pick up.

Last month, however, 30% of the 8.9 million involuntary part-time workers simply couldn't find full-time work, up from 20% in early 2009. That indicates many employers are hiring new workers as demand rises but are leery of adding full-time staff in a wobbly economy, experts say.

"They don't know what's going to happen next," says Jill Ater, co-founder of 10 til 2, a staffing firm that places part-time workers exclusively. "Rather than bring on a full-time person with benefits, they bring on a 20-hour person for less and get enough done." Some, she says, hire two 20-hour staffers instead of a full-timer to avoid paying benefits.

At Asbestos Abatement in Denver, business "is definitely slower than I'd like to see it," says owner Joel Egelman.

A few weeks ago he hired an office manager who puts in 30 hours a week. "We like the ability to save a little money and see how much we can put on her until we have to move her to full-time status," he says. "We also wanted to test it out to see what that person can handle."

Some cite a deeper structural shift to part-time work. Part-time workers — voluntary and involuntary — represent 19.3% of total employment this year, up from 17.4% in 2008. The increasing use of part-timers lets employers better match staffing with the workload, says Susan Lambert, a labor economist at the University of Chicago.

In department stores and call centers, for example, demand can vary widely by the hour. Sophisticated computer models predict when traffic will surge so managers can slot in workers for just a few hours. Lambert says other industries — including hospitals, restaurants, hotels and factories — are increasingly using part-time workers to respond to blips in demand even while employing a core full-time staff.

As recently as the 1990s, 60% of retail workers — including seasonal employees — were full time, says Daniel Butler, vice president of operations for the National Retail Federation. Today, 60% are part-timers,. The switch happened after more people began shopping at night and on weekends.

"Retailers through the recession learned that they don't want to be overstaffed," Butler says. "It has a bottom-line effect on the profitability of the company."

Hours are short, applicants plentiful

High unemployment has made it much easier to fill part-time jobs, experts say. At staffing firm Randstad, as many as 10 candidates vie for each position, up from three before the recession, says Senior Vice President Joanie Ruge. "In a good economy, it was much more difficult to find people who wanted to work part time," she says.

There is a downside for firms that employ a large number of workers with no benefits and uncertain hours.

"You get high turnover. You get unreliable workers," Lambert says. "If you have workers committed to your firm, you tend to produce a better product. You provide a better service."

Alpine Access, a call center provider, has about 5,000 representatives who work from home, half of whom are part time and handle spikes in traffic in periods of two or four hours, for example. Such spikes could be prompted by pay-per-view TV specials, cable outages and special credit card offers, among other things, says Chief Operating Officer Rob Duncan.

Duncan says part-time assignments typically fit workers' schedules. But he acknowledges they more readily leave for other jobs than full-timers, and their lower benefit costs are partly offset by other expenses. "To use two people to fill a 40-hour workweek doubles training and recruiting costs," Duncan says.

For workers, part-time gigs can mean relief from unemployment but only a modest easing of financial hardship. Donna Camp, of Schenectady, N.Y., took a job as a part-time grocery cashier in early October after separating from her husband last summer. The former diet technician couldn't find a full-time position in health care or even retailing, in part, because she had been out of the workforce for seven years.

The cashier job pays $8 an hour, and she logs 20 to 30 hours a week. "It's hard to budget when the hours are so variable," says Camp, 50. "It scares me to think how small the check is that I'm going to pick up this week."

The uncertainty has prompted Camp to pay just the minimum balance on her credit cards and to try to avoid using them. She keeps the thermostat in her house at 64 degrees in the daytime, washes clothes in cold water and hangs them to dry to conserve electricity. She gets haircuts once every six weeks instead of monthly.

Camp has thought about getting another part-time job, but her inconsistent hours make that almost impossible. She works afternoons some days but evenings others, and she finds out her weekly schedule the previous Friday. She's also hesitant to limit her availability.

"I want to show them I'll do anything, hoping they'll eventually keep me on," she says. "But I can't pay my bills on the part-time hours, so it's a Catch-22."

When part-time jobs get smaller

Some Americans have had their hours cut.

After losing her job as a horticulturist at a golf course early this year, Vicki Lehr of Branford, Conn., was hired as a salesperson at a garden center in April. But her weekly hours were trimmed to about 30 in July and to 20 a couple of months later, slashing her weekly pay to about $300 from $550. The reduction was especially trying because her husband, Blake, a food delivery driver, was downgraded from full-time to part-time status two years ago.

Vicki Lehr, 52, says she grows her own vegetables, postpones doctor visits and shops at Goodwill instead of Marshalls, recently buying a coat for $8. The irregular hours disrupt family life. "On the weekends my husband was off, and I'm working, so we never get the time to spend together."

In the past couple of weeks, both Lehrs were laid off. "I don't know what's going to happen," she says.

Some part-time workers teeter near poverty.

Nancy Garrett, of San Rafael, Calif., lost her $65,000-a-year job providing sales support to a promotions company in March 2009. She exhausted her unemployment benefits early this year and burned through $75,000 in savings before she found a job as the weekend manager of a self-storage facility in early October.

She takes home $600 a month — enough to pay utility, garbage and water bills — and has no health insurance. Garrett rents out rooms in her three-bedroom house and plans to apply for food stamps and other social services.

Still, she says, the job has helped restore her self-confidence. "I have a focus to go someplace and do something, and to have people respond positively to me has really done me a world of good," says Garrett, 56.

While part-time work traditionally has been parceled out to lower-level hourly employees such as cashiers and administrative assistants, Lambert says it has spread to the white-collar world in recent years. Ater of 10 til 2 says she is placing marketing directors, seasonal tax preparers and non-profit directors in part-time roles.

David Bergman, 59, of Elk Grove Village, Ill., earned $350,000 a year as chief financial officer of a firm that administered health benefits before he left several years ago and did some consulting work while he looked for a full-time job.

Last year, he took a part-time position with a small staffing agency. Monday through Wednesday, he serves as comptroller, balancing the books and dispensing advice on how to manage growth and reduce costs. On Thursday and Friday he takes on a less-prestigious role: delivering payroll checks to clients.

He says he uses the deliveries as an opportunity to talk to clients and market the company. "I used to be an introvert. Now I'm a lot more open to going out and meeting people."

Bergman works 28 hours and earns $1,250 each week, a fraction of his former pay. He's not living hand-to-mouth, but he has canceled his lawn service and premium cable TV channels, and treks from store to store to find bargains.

He is among the roughly 20% of part-timers working at least two jobs to get by. He teaches college business courses for several thousand dollars a year.

"You juggle a lot more balls," he says. "This allows me to fill up some of the void."